


Still Trying to Win

by ConstanceComment



Series: People in Masks [2]
Category: Les Misérables (2012), Les Misérables - All Media Types, Les Misérables - Victor Hugo
Genre: Alternate Universe - Book/Movie Fusion, Alternate Universe - Javert Survives, Caretaking, Fever, Fix-It, Hurt/Comfort, Literary References & Allusions, Loss of Virginity, M/M, Major Character Injury, Middle Aged Virgins, Nightmares, Religious Imagery & Symbolism, Resolved Sexual Tension, Shaving, The Author Has Never Written Porn Before, Things Get Intense And They Do It, Unresolved Sexual Tension
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-05-27
Updated: 2013-06-11
Packaged: 2017-12-13 02:29:51
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 16,341
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/818910
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ConstanceComment/pseuds/ConstanceComment
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>One hour, three days, nineteen years; it is hard not to count the nights under the weight of all that time. Valjean numbers the evenings and retreats with every sunrise; neither of them see half so clearly in direct light.</p><p>After rescuing Javert from the Seine, Valjean finds that understanding is still slow to come. There is more to a man than is contained in the physical; there is more to language than speech.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Only Mostly

**Author's Note:**

  * For [brodinsons (aeon_entwined)](https://archiveofourown.org/users/aeon_entwined/gifts), [Idril_Earfalas](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Idril_Earfalas/gifts).



> Sorry to get your hopes up; this isn't new content. It's chapter three of Six-Fingered Man moved to a new home. I'm indecisive, and have changed my mind; this is going to be a sequel instead of a continuing single work. There will be more however! Two more chapters and then we're done. Apologies for the inconvenience and my poor decision making.

_“Life is pain, Highness. Anyone who says differently is selling something.”_  
William Goldman, _The Princess Bride_

* * *

On the first night, Valjean thinks that he is going to die. The feeling that plagues him is more than exhaustion; Valjean does not know if there exists a word for the way that his body seeks rest. Every fiber of his being wants nothing more than to  _stop_ , and still there is work to be done.

The fiacre deposits them at Rue de l'Homme-Armé No. 7, Valjean’s promise fulfilled in circumstances far worse than what he had originally imagined when he first offered the Javert his address. Valjean takes Javert here because he cannot think of anywhere else for to go; introducing Javert to Cosette would create more problems than it would solve, and the mere thought of leaving Javert to the anonymous care of a hospital was at once horrifying and viscerally intolerable. Further, Valjean is certain that the hospitals are full, stuffed beyond bursting with the revolution's martyrs and victims alike.

Needing to assess Javert’s injuries, Valjean fumbles at the buttons of his sodden shirt before he gives up and resorts to simply cutting it away. The knife in his hand flickers as he drags it too close to Javert’s chest; it cannot have been so few hours ago that he cut Javert free with this knife the last time. Javert is asleep and still Valjean can hear the reproach in a voice that is not there:

_How right, how right—_

Valjean banishes the thought with a practiced mental hand. It does not go so quietly as he is used to, lingering in the corners of the suddenly too-small room, waiting patient with the shadows.

Javert’s ruined shirt falls to the ground with a wet slap. With it goes an unexpected clacking peal of beads; something in his breast pocket dropped by a careless hand to ring upon the floor. Valjean leans awkwardly to investigate the sound, his back and knees protesting his own weight. Reaching to the floor, hands questing blindly in the shadow of his own frame, Valjean finds an old jet rosary, the beads worn by time and use.

Valjean’s heart thuds a painful, extra beat, stumbling in his chest. Javert kept the rosary. Why in God’s name did Javert keep the rosary? Obviously it means _something_ for Javert to have kept it so long, so close, tucked neatly into the pocket above his heart. Strange that something so small could signify so much. Was it penance? A reminder of his failures? This last comes closest to his picture of the man, but Valjean is done making assumptions and so pockets the rosary before adding it to the growing list of questions that he will ask Javert when he wakes.

Because Javert _will_ wake; Valjean has very little doubt that Javert is stubborn enough to live.

If anything his body is a testament to this; Javert’s chest is a mess of old scars and more recent bruises, the damage the Seine has wreaked already beginning to bloom livid along his torso, though Valjean suspects they will be more brilliant come morning. Probing carefully at his patient Valjean finds a veritable trove of old injuries; a few bullet wounds, puckered and raised, a few cuts, some long, some shallow. The story of Javert’s life and work is written in his skin. The canvas he presents paints a picture of recklessness tempered by just enough luck and caution to keep him alive. The number of infections Javert must have fought before surely are numbered as many as half his bullet wounds; Valjean is faintly surprised that Javert has lived to see this point despite his lifestyle.

Questing carefully, Valjean eventually finds the break, a nasty fracture he is quick to leave alone as Javert cries out in his sleep. Valjean removes his hands from Javert’s skin as if burned and prays that a doctor can be summoned soon. This is an injury Valjean does not know how to treat.

Wrestling Javert as carefully as he can into one of his own shirts, Valjean leaves it unbuttoned, his fingers quaking too much from exhaustion for him to manage.

After that, sleep claims him, slinking through the window, roiling soft as fabric as it covers his eyes. His own clothes are slick and wet on his skin, but Valjean’s bones are as led and he knows he is unable to handle the buttons, much less the knife he would need to cut himself free. Collapsing in the armchair he drags bodily to Javert’s bedside, Valjean finds unconsciousness to be like sinking, like being crushed by a cart, slowly, only the ending comes as a relief.

The last thought he has before he sleeps is that this is what Valjean imagines drowning to be like.

* * *

On the second night, Valjean dreams of the abyss, the picture dark and troubled, void of color and of light, shot through only by a vicious clarity.

Impaled by a swath of white that only serves to highlight the black, Javert hangs suspended before him once more, now resplendent in his working finery, all his artifice replaced, though around his neck, a noose. Javert’s hair is queued neatly, his hat set above it. At his side the, his silver sword and his iron cane, on his hands stiff leather gloves. Javert’s whole greatcoat suggests wings but the noose around his neck is instead an anchor, is instead a pair of silver cuffs, is instead Valjean's own convict's hands, the irons welded into his wrists thick and heavy, trailing away to drag them both down into a greater darkness that waits empty with too many teeth.

Both their hands are tied with Javert’s beads, stretched out to mingle with Valjean’s chains, the cross hanging between them as a waysign for the damned.

Under Valjean's hands Javert's spine snaps, his bones breaking the skin in a way they logically shouldn't, the wound opening like a knife slice. Blood pours out with every human pulse, black and oily on Valjean's skin as his fingers press deeper, wrap tighter; he is, it seems, still possessed of the convict's need to break. Valjean grinds his bones to dust and Javert only smiles at him through colorless eyes, thin lips curved up and dripping with blood. Javert moves to say something, or else Valjean leans in; Javert's lips brush his but his breath is rancid with iron, and Valjean's muted senses bloom rotten with the taste of someone else's unwelcome mercy.

He startles awake at that, panting, frightening, gasping for all the air he can take into his lungs. For all that Javert’s labored breathing is still the loudest sound in the room Valjean still feels blood beneath his fingertips, his palms itching with the way a man’s bones could snap like twigs in his hands. His ears are ringing with that sound, and he knows he did not imagine it, his mind handily supplying the noise form Javert’s fall from the bridge, simply shifting the location of the broken bones. Wrapped around his fingers is Javert’s old jet rosary; Valjean turns it over in his hands but the repetitive motion brings anything but peace.

He swallows once in pain as he tries to control his heartbeat, pressing a hand to a jaw clenched tight, aching and strangely painful. Probing at it his discomfort with a finger, Valjean finds that he had bitten a hole in his tongue, his mouth full of blood. Returning his hand to the rosary in his lap, Valjean curls and uncurls his fists, testing the motion almost unconsciously as he turns the beads. He can still feel Javert’s bones snapping, and though he knows his hands are dry of any blood but his own, Valjean can still feel the wet grit of Javert’s life beneath his fingernails, lingering and in the creases of his palms.

Valjean had so much wanted to break him, once. Now the thought of Javert broken makes Valjean physically ill. Valjean looks to Javert shattered in the bed and wants again to check his pulse, but at the same time Valjean desperately fears to touch him, his hands still wet with blood.

Sitting on the armchair Valjean watches Javert's uneasy slumber, counting each rise and fall of his chest, waiting for his heartbeat to slow. It is dark still but the night is drawing at last to a close, and Valjean knows that there is little hope of falling asleep again for all that his bones still ache with exhaustion. Dozing, Valjean waits the night while Javert breathes an uneven, choking rhythm, his lungs still sounding thick with fluid. Valjean should attend, but Javert still breathes and he is altogether too tired to move. Further, there is something about the man when he sleeps that Valjean is unwilling to disturb or think about at much length given the state of his own dreams.

It takes the sun breaking on the long overdue morning to bring Valjean from his fugue, the light and the appearance of Javert’s beastly cough startling him to action. For a moment, Valjean is afraid to touch him. Then he finds that Javert’s coughs are bringing more than air; they are dredging up foul phlegm tinged red with blood, and his irrational panic is sequestered beneath a far more immediate one. The Seine still has her frozen claws in Javert and Valjean cannot seem to keep him warm. The fire blazes in the hearth and still Javert's face is wet with sweat and tears from the fevered nightmares that plague him.

That whole day he spends frantic, praying once more for a doctor, this time sending the housekeeper out to fetch one; she returns empty-handed but agrees to help draw a bath.

Valjean goes to clean Javert and finds that he is afraid to touch him, hands shaking on the warmed cloth. He does his best but Valjean is sure he botches it; this is the second shirt he has ruined with water, and the Seine does not wash away easy.

Valjean’s hands itch where they touch skin, burning from the contact he irrationally feels that he has stolen.

Valjean bathes himself after that, drawing the water himself so as not to bother the housekeeper any longer. Sitting naked in the moonlight through the window, Valjean lingers until the water is cold; he shakes and shakes and still smells blood. No, the Seine does not wash away easy.

Valjean is beginning to suspect it will not wash away at all.

* * *

On the third night, the doctor arrives at last, drawn away from the crowded hospitals by a promise of pay and a man with desperate injuries.

Valjean would feel bad of the lie, but it is a small one. When the doctor comes Valjean pays him what he asks for and half as much again; he realizes somewhere in the back of his mind that there is no amount he would not pay to see Javert healthy. The thought does not disquiet Valjean as much as it should.

With Javert still unconscious, Valjean must lift him as the doctor assesses his injuries, the injured man disturbingly limp in Valjean’s hold, his skin hot enough with fever to be felt through the ill-fitting shirt that Valjean had put him in.

The doctor is efficient, distant; he treats Javert with the practice of a battlefield surgeon, economic in his movements as he divines in bone and muscle. Quickly it is determined that Javert’s ribs truly are broken, though this is no surprise to anyone with a pair of eyes in their head. What does come as a surprise to the doctor, at least, is that the broken ribs have not pierced the skin; Javert’s injuries on that count are quite dire. Three of his ribs are fractured, one is broken outright though the break is clean. As for the spine, it too has broken, though not nearly so dire as the fractures in Javert’s ribs. There Javert is merely cracked, the bones bruised in the fall, not truly sheared, a small mercy that Valjean is desperately grateful for.

As for Javert’s cough, the Seine is to blame, Javert’s lungs fighting an infection. It is, in fact water he coughs, or something close to it. Even though Javert had seemingly vomited all the Seine Valjean dreged up with him back into the river, an infection of some sort has settled into Javert’s lungs. The doctor informs Valjean that the fever Javert is burning with is meant to drive out the infection; at first Valjean bristles at the doctor’s condescending tone, then he is reminded of Fantine, one cough conjuring another as his past stares him in the face.

Panic, it seems, is to be his state of being for the next several days. This, too, is fitting and Valjean resolves himself to it, squaring his wide shoulders under the weight. He has panicked on Javert’s account before. He is familiar with this emotion and all it brings, knows how to best harness it. True, Valjean has never been afraid _for_ him before, but that does not need to take his knees out from under him unless he allows it to.

Or so he thinks. Doubt creeps in like water, and is just as hard to banish.

Valjean used to be good with his hands, had a fair understanding of how broken things could be repaired, but Javert is human, not some object that can be fixed. The reality is, quite simply, that Valjean is afraid to touch him. He is afraid that should he try, Javert will slip through his fingers like so much mercury, or else he will crack in Valjean's hands, spine breaking under skin the way it did in his dreams. Shuddering Valjean clenches his fists and tries to ignore the phantom devastation crawling across his palms, the tang of iron in his mouth.

Valjean no longer trusts his senses. The truth of Javert is more than can be explained by simple sight, simple reasoning. Valjean looks at him and sees a shattered statute and knows that he is wrong, that he has always been wrong. There is and always has been more to Javert than the things he is made of. Yet Valjean cannot stop thinking of him in relation to the physical, the inanimate. Every way he would describe the man ultimately resorts to the material; Javert had always been a collection of articles and effects, the lines of his clothes as immaculate as the straight bearing of his spine, all of it suggesting duty, suggesting justice, suggesting pride. But now Javert has none of these, and that description paints a better picture of an armoire than a man in any case.

When Javert's eyes are closed, the mistake is harder to make. In Valjean’s arms Javert’s chest rises and falls like any other man’s, though it rattles terribly as the doctor quietly secures it with gauze. More than once Valjean has found himself simply watching Javert sleep, baffled by the person that sits in his bed, the impossible contradictions that Javert holds within his body. Valjean is making a study of Javert, trying in his own way to recover time lost, to make up for sins past.

Seeing him, truly seeing him without his effects is strange. Javert’s face is not— it is not soft, exactly; the lines on his face are too worn-in for that, not even sleep succeeds in smoothing them out. But there is a conspicuous loss of purpose when it comes to Javert at rest. Limp in Valjean’s arms as the doctor fusses over him, it is clear that this motionlessness is no natural thing, Javert hiding perfectly in the shadows, or Javert conspicuous at parade rest. This is simply Javert, halted, and Valjean finds that Javert wears stillness poorly. It pulls at something in Valjean, a hook behind his breastbone tugging sharply as if to turn him inside out.

The doctor finishing his task, Javert wheezes in his sleep and Valjean startles to motion; he feels like he is always startled by Javert. He is always the same and never what Valjean expects.

The doctor leaves quickly once his work is done, accepting his pay and then the extra sous that Valjean thrusts upon him. Before he leaves he admonishes Valjean to take more rest for himself, not to waste away over his invalid friend.

He advises that Valjean say a prayer on his rosary. Valjean stares at the doctor in confusion before he realizes that Javert’s rosary is still in his hand; he has been carrying it for two nights. The few grooves left in the worn beads are starting to wear patterns into his skin.

* * *

On the fifth night, Valjean wakes from exhausted, omen-filled dreams of his own to find Javert calling out, aborted curses and commands struggling from his mouth. Valjean's heart twists and he staggers from his station in the armchair at Javert's bedside to grab at Javert's hand. Even in his sleep Javert clutches back and though his grip is weak, it is undeniably there, the instinct to grab ingrained even in Javert’s unconscious mind. That should not reassure Valjean so much as it does, his heartbeat slowing fractionally, the startled panic of his sudden awakening beginning to wear off in the face of the realization that Javert is safe.

That thought in particular hits Valjean between the eyes; Javert, safe. There is nothing about the man that has ever suggested safety. For others, perhaps, but not to Valjean. Javert has only ever been danger to him, and now Valjean finds him guarding his enemy in his own home.

But no, this is not true either. Javert is many things but he is not Valjean’s enemy. Or at least, Valjean is not his. The rosary he now wears on his neck and the night on the bridge have proved that; Valjean cannot believe for even a second that Javert’s fall into the Seine was anything other than a purposeful jump. Again the horror raises itself in Valjean’s throat; if he had not followed him from the doorway— Valjean shudders, feeling sick.

Affection had not propelled him to the Pont-au-Change, and he still cannot identify his feelings for Javert. Valjean pities him, feels responsible for him , fears him, fears _for_ him; Valjean is cognizant, also, of the danger that Javert could be, though Valjean had resigned himself to judgment the night of the Barricades. The rest of his emotions concerning Javert are an undefinable maelstrom. They shift too quickly, rage too quietly for Valjean to extract and identify any singular one from the rest.

As he watches his charge sleep, Valjean cannot help but watch his face in particular. He has spent the entirety of their (admittedly turbulent) acquaintance ignoring Javert’s expressions. In Valjean’s grip Javert’s hand is rough, the hand of a laborer, a man used to work. Of course, Valjean knew this already, that Javert was not a man who shied from work. But it is one thing to know that fact in the sense superficial and another thing entirely to know the memory of the senses; here is the crease where Javert’s hands bent around his cudgel, there are the callused lines worn smooth against by a pen held long fingers that were always, always grasping. Javert’s hands, much like his scars, tell a story of work and duty, written in skin.

In his sleep Javert makes a sound that is nothing like terror, though it provokes that response in Valjean, memories stirring. No, this noise from Javert is more like triumph; his hand spasms once where Valjean has threaded their fingers and the grip is nearly painful. Eyes shut Javert’s terrible smile reappears for the first time in years; it is not quite so horrible as it had been, though perhaps that is merely unconsciousness that mellows him. The expression remains decidedly ferocious, but Valjean cannot but smile back, entirely helplessly, squeezing Javert’s fingers once by reflex.

Perhaps the mellowing lies with him. Valjean is not so afraid of Javert any longer; more the shift has been towards a fear _for_ him.

At that thought, it strikes Valjean quite suddenly that it has only been five days, six at the most since the Barricades, since the Seine.

 _‘So much has changed,’_ Valjean remarks to himself, but this is not quite correct. The facts have not altered. It is merely his perspective that has shifted so radically.

Five days can be an eternity in the hands of God, and it is on this thought that Valjean realizes he has yet to inform Cosette that he still lives.

On the fifth night Valjean shamefully writes his daughter a small letter, and on the sixth he receives a full missive on her condition, Marius’s condition as he heals fast with love, and the state of the house on Rue Plumet. Enclosed with that is a carefully worded expounding upon Valjean’s failures to notify his daughter that he had not died in the riots after the Barricades fall. Cosette, it seems, quite distressed by her father’s disappearance, expects regular letters.

Valjean finds he cannot deny them to her, and on the seventh night he mails his first letter after writing several drafts; he cannot find a good way to account for the time he has lost that does not include naming Javert.

Eventually he settles for the appellation of “dear friend, injured in battle,” and makes it clear that Cosette need not visit while her hands are full with a friend of her own.

That word again; every time Valjean says it, the phrase tastes less and less like a lie.

* * *

On the tenth night, Javert’s fever brings him near to waking.

Valjean startles to hear Javert shouting; for a moment, Valjean thinks that he is no longer asleep. In a sense, this is correct. Javert’s eyes have snapped open, steel returned. For a moment the change is so breathtaking Valjean stops, frightened; Javert’s scrutiny is a dangerous thing, almost worse than his unfounded regard, both things that Valjean has never quite been able to tolerate. Even in Montreuil he fidgeted, even in Toulon he snarled under its weight. Javert’s attention has a terrible property to it; every time that Javert examines him Valjean feels as a specimen under glass, a struggling insect pinned to the wall, and for all Javert’s apparent delirium, now is no different.

Unable to do otherwise, Valjean holds Javert’s gaze, spine snapping to a ready position on instinct as he dangles between the impulses to fight or flee.

His eyes are steel, but do not see, looking at Valjean, but also through him. There is a deference waiting in his expression, sickening.

“M. Madeleine,” Javert greets him stiffly.

Valjean reels as if struck. The name may as well have been a blow; Valjean lost it in another river a lifetime ago and is not glad to have it returned to him. For a moment, he cannot respond at all, jaws locked tight around his history.

Valjean’s past has always had a name, had a face. It cannot be buried, it has hounded him all his life and dogged his every step from the prison galleys to the Paris streets. Valjean looks down and sees in his power a terrible shade. There is something in Javert’s eyes that knows, something in his eyes that only half knows.

“Though I suspect you were called something else, once—“ Javert starts lowly, coughing and retching slightly as his fever makes itself known once more. Valjean by practiced instinct places a basin beneath his mouth to catch his sick and is glad that he had the foresight to move the rosary to his chest days ago; it he had still had it on his palm, it would certainly be rattling hard against the bowl to be heard even through Javert’s fog of illness.

“I am on to you, I have seen your face in my dreams, imposed on another’s,” Javert grinds out, vindictive and wondering. “What sort of trick is it that you would be so many men at once—“

“Hush, inspector,” Valjean commands him, but the words are the barest of whispers. He cannot find the air in his lungs to make them heard.

As if responding to his orders, Javert falls, tension leaving his body as his spine goes limp, fever releasing him back into slumber. The hearth fire, put out in the infernal heat of Paris in mid-June, is naught but embers, the ashes lingering in Valjean’s mouth, struck dry in the late Spring heat.

Javert sleeps, and the silence that radiates out from his every unsteady, choking breath is a deadly-soft thing, reaching out to smother. The dark in the apartment is thin and impenetrable; Javert dreams and shakes with fever, leaving Valjean alone with his thoughts, and the ghosts of the men he has been. On his neck the rosary is an anchor, dragging him down into the darkness of his past.

* * *

On the twelth night Javert’s fever breaks. Valjean would weep with relief, not only to have escape the painful horrors of sleeping in the armchair at his bedside, but also because it should mean that the worst is over. Beneath his bandages, the swelling and bruising along Javert’s torso is beginning to subside, though Valjean knows it will be several weeks yet until Javert is truly healed.

Javert wakes slowly, groaning back into true consciousness. Valjean brings water to him carefully, hating how fragile Javert feels in his hands as he lifts the man from the bed to the cup, one hand on his back to lever him upwards, gentle as he dares around Javert’s broken spine.

Javert drinks like a man at the end of a drought for all that he had drowned. Water spills down his chin in small rivulets that Valjean must wipe away.

Immediately, Javert’s hands go to his breast, fingers searching with blind purpose for a pocket that is not there. He frowns when he does not find it, disappointment keeping the expression from a true scowl. His eyes are still closed; if Javert knows who he is with he says nothing, and is soon asleep once more.


	2. The Same Wind

_“We are men of action. Lies do not become us.”_  
— William Goldman, _The Princess Bride_

* * *

On the thirteenth night Valjean is writing a letter to Cosette when Javert wakes for the second time.

Unlike the night before, this time Javert reaches consciousness more slowly, climbing to wakefulness in increments just as the sun slips below the Parisian horizon, the window quietly going dark.

Valjean, for his part, lets him be. It is clear that Javert is aware, but Valjean is apprehensive to speak with him. He has too many questions and not enough control over his emotions. Nearly two weeks alone with his thoughts have done little to order them; Valjean has always been a man of isolation, but proximity to Javert has made him anxious, his instinctual sense of the man’s location making him tense, Valjean’s body setting itself to wariness without his consent even as his mind knows that he is in no danger. Valjean has for near two weeks now been coiled in his own home, strung tight between a thousand different worries and fears. He does not trust himself to speak to Javert without snapping.

In his few hours of leisure these last past days, Valjean has written lists of questions and torn every one of them to pieces. Over and over he stains his fingers with ink only to throw his lists away in frustration; Valjean has a thousand things that he wants to ask Javert, and barely any sense of how to string the words together. Every time he tries to put his notions to paper the sentences fall apart, becoming so many letters, symbols without meaning. Valjean cannot find a way to make his intentions translate from the deep desire to shake Javert until he speaks into a series of questions that will actually produce results and not further spinal injury.

As Javert stirs, Valjean does his best to remain outwardly calm, though his body seizes tight under the unmistakable weight of Javert’s regard. His attention being and always have been a sharp deadly thing, the inspector’s gaze is a knife blade pressed lightly against Valjean’s back, a danger that his body instinctually flinches away from even as all his senses focus on the one point of contact, his frayed nerves pointed at the source of his discomfort. Valjean cannot concentrate on his letter to Cosette any longer, but continues to write for the sake of appearances, desperately trying to order himself internally.

The cords of muscle in his back remember, however, the way that a lash could strike, or a cudgel fall. Valjean’s body remembers and knows what it fears even when his mind is at ease; when he is in disarray such as this it is infinitely worse, and Valjean must do his best not to do something unwise. His whole body is tight with tension he has no outlet for; Valjean is not sure what he would do, even, given the chance to do something at last.

Behind him as Javert wakes, the inspector does not shout, does not bolt. He simply raises himself in a rustling of bedclothes, making a small noise of pain before freezing, the sounds of movement halting as the weight of his gaze on Valjean’s back intensifies.

Carefully, Valjean scratches his pen against the page, writing nonsense words that he knows will ruin his letter. The noise rasps over the page, pen tip dragging hard over the paper, cutting a small hole in the page, Valjean’s unseeing eyes boring another one above it.

Reassured that Valjean has not noticed him, Javert continues to raise himself, the bed creaking under his weight. Valjean hears Javert’s small motions and attempts to see him without looking, matching sounds to sights. Valjean finds that even in his mind’s eye he has no clear picture of him. Valjean lingers at small details he has learned these last nights; air hissed; the rasping whisper of his hands making fists as they clench in around the sheets, palms creased and worn from a lifetime of work; a more slender frame than Valjean’s own tucked into a borrowed shirt too wide and too short; hisses of breath from between teeth clenched in a straight jawline, unshaved because Valjean does not trust his shaking hands with a blade so near to Javert’s pulse; thin lips drawn back over bared teeth in a snarl of pain and something like shame; a spine, bowed and curved under the weight of an old tired man, only bone, if ever iron.

Beneath Valjean’s hands the paper has crumpled, ink smeared hopelessly across his fingers. Valjean is not sure when, exactly, he destroyed his letter. The paper is not ripped; merely pulled and strained and worried into knots. It is not a comfort; the ink is wet on his palms, and his mouth tastes slightly of remembered blood.

“I see you have won your duel with death,” Javert remarks; he sounds rather as if he has swallowed ground glass. Valjean has never been so glad to hear him speak; he has never had cause to feel so wretched at the quality of the sound. The words cut through Valjean’s thoughts like a blade, or a gunshot through skin; he hangs tattered on the remnants, tries not to bleed.

Valjean turns about too quickly, the chair at the small writing table scraping loudly along the ground as he whips about. Despite it, the spell between the two of them remains; Javert is framed by the light through the window, the waning moon and the stars that shine around it casting Javert into shadow, the edges of him lost to the night.

His spine is bent, but he is trying to straighten it; Valjean cannot see his eyes and desperately, he does not want to.

“That I have,” Valjean grinds out, forcing the words from a throat caved in. “Welcome back to the land of the living.”

He cannot see Javert’s face; all he feels is the terrible weight of his regard. Valjean fidgets; he has always fidgeted, always ran. But there is no escape.

“I am tired,” Javert says after a long moment, and the light from the window is angled wrong to meet his eyes; Valjean cannot discern their color.

“You have slept for two weeks,” Valjean protests; there is a part of his heart that aches for even the shadow of Javert. He does not want to lose him again.

“I am tired,” Javert repeats, and begins slowly the torturous process of folding his spine back down to the bed, his broken body lying still after a lifetime of motion.

Valjean does not turn back, or close his eyes, but he feels blinded all the same. The room is small but a wall is in it; from the other side he can hear Javert’s small noises of pain, and at his side Valjean’s useless hands twitch, trying not to reach, and failing to grasp.

* * *

On the fourteenth night, Javert is strong enough to speak with him, though not at any great length, needing to take pauses in conversation in order to simply breathe, his lungs still weak in the thick summer air. Outside the apartment June turns and turns, and the city with it, but the one window lets in heat as well as light, leaving it trapped in the too-small rooms while outside the night cools, everything but the space here chilled by the moon that wanes, always wanes and waxes never.

“Why am I here?” Javert asks eventually, breaking the somewhat uneasy silence that lives between them.

Tonight Paris is covered in cloud; Javert lies on his back and still Valjean cannot see his eyes no matter how he may wish for them to be revealed. God sends no wind, no tempest fury to expose once more the secrets of the man who lies in Valjean’s bed like the dead or the dying.

“The hospitals were full,” Valjean replies evenly. For all Javert stares at the ceiling, his attention is a living weight on Valjean, worn and achingly familiar for all that it sets his muscles at the ready to run. Valjean squares the weight to his shoulders without moving, but the tension in his frame is harder to bear than Javert’s regard. It moves through his fingers like quicksilver; Valjean does his best not to twitch.

“I had hoped for something more philosophical,” Javert admits, coughing slightly in discomfort.

“I am not a philosopher,” Valjean points out, wishing for something better to say than a simple observation.

Javert sighs, and changes tactics. “Why did you pull my body from the river?”

Valjean imagines this is what Javert is when he questions his suspects or his sources, or something like it; Javert is too tired to be in his element. He sounds as weary as Valjean feels and he hates it, hates that this is what they have been reduced to, what their arrogance has made them.

“You were not dead yet,” Valjean manages, and his voice is less even now. “I could not watch you die—“ Valjean shakes his head, cutting off his own words as he attempts to reorder his own thoughts. “I will not have your death on my hands.”

 _‘They are already covered in blood,’_ Valjean thinks to himself, and feels the ink he could not wash away.

“So you would take theft on them instead?” Javert asks, curious and resigned.

“What I did was no more theft than to take a gun from a child,” Valjean snaps, anger rising as bile in his choking throat.

“I am no child,” Javert snarls, and Valjean is viciously glad of the sound of that spark, the small flash of steel behind thin lips. Anything but defeat; anything but exhaustion.

“Then what are you then?” Valjean demands; words come to his mouth without conscious thought, his heart speaking through the fog of a mind clouded with silence.

“I do not know!” Javert snaps back, biting the words out, mouth clicking shut after as if to snatch them back.

Standing at the wall, Valjean closes his eyes, and leans back slowly, grounding himself in his spine, seeking center like a man unmoored.

On the bed Javert has not moved. He stares at the ceiling through eyes Valjean cannot see. “I am afraid,” he says slowly, and every word is a revelation, “that whatever I am, it is what you have made me.”

Valjean’s own eyes fly open, the words a hammer blow to his ribcage, a stone weighing on his chest that makes it hard to breathe, and impossible to speak.

Unheeding of Valjean, Javert’s words increase in speed, tumbling over one another in their haste to be realized. “You broke me to your hand years ago and it is only now I feel the ache; what is it that you could possibly want from me I have traded everything— freedom for freedom, a life for a life—“

“I would not have you _broken_ ,” Valjean practically chokes, racing to contradict Javert.

“What _would_ you have of me then?” Javert asks, and there is not enough energy or will in it to be a demand, though his voice is wild, though his words are cracking in the air like ice shattering on water.

“I do not need _anything_ of you!” Valjean protests. “A man is not a thing to be owned or kept—“ Valjean cannot finish the sentence; even as he speaks the words he knows they are not the right ones. He would have thought that truth self-evident, but he remembers that Javert was once a prison guard, and he himself was once in a sense the man’s property inasmuch as any transgressor of the law Javert viewed as remanded to his custody.

“Of course,” Javert relents after a moment, though it is clear he does not agree, and his voice is still wild, his eyes squeezed shut against a truth he will not hear. “It stands to reason that a saint ask no payment for his miracles.”

Valjean is stunned. “I am not a _saint_ ,” he manages, tripping on the words.

“Are you not?” Javert questions him, adding; “In one night you brought two dead men back to life, dragging their bodies through shit and filth to bring them clean to the shore. I would say that rather fulfills the required two miracles that qualify one for sainthood—“

“I am not a saint,” Valjean repeats lowly, and his own voice is harsh, grating in his throat.

Javert does not contest this point, but neither does he acknowledge it. He is too battered for a shrug, but the ambivalence transmits easily across the space between them, too wide and too small all at once.

Valjean goes to empty the bowl, leaving the apartment for the thick summer heat. He nods to the housekeeper as he goes and shares with her a commiserate look for the state of his houseguest. Valjean keeps no garden at this house, having no space in the garden, but the lack of rain in Paris makes him think of his daughter and their garden, and wonder if she keeps the plants when she is not busy tending to her love.

When Valjean returns to the room, he finds that Javert is asleep, or else pretending to be. Exhaustion appears to be winning out as his body mends itself, and Valjean hands itch to check his pulse, but holds back from what he has no right to touch.

Valjean retreats to his own bed that night, and tries to put Javert’s condition out of his mind for one sleep at least, but the words he has said ring in Valjean’s ears long after, and follow him into his unquiet dreams.

* * *

On the fifteenth night, Javert snaps at him, his patience for his own convalescence having stretched thin after only two days and three nights spent intermittently awake.

First he snaps for a razor; “I am not going to slit my throat,” he says disparagingly when Valjean hesitates.

All the same Valjean holds the razor himself, willing his hands to be steady so close to Javert’s pulse.

The lather is cold, and the bite of it is still soft on Valjean’s fingers. Javert’s face, however, is not, his two-week beard still scratchy in places. Javert keeps his eyes closed throughout the ordeal, though something like pain shows on his face as Valjean moves a hand to his heartbeat, staying longer than he should on the proof it represents.

Valjean is quicker after that, trying not linger on the way the blade drags, the skin it reveals. Javert changes under his hands and though he more and more resembles the way he once was as Valjean works, Javert still seems intolerably different. Something, somewhere has shifted and Valjean cannot find the epicenter of the quake between them, simply the radius of its aftershocks.

“You watch me,” Javert grumbles later, facing the window as Valjean moves about the room putting the shaving kit back, “three nights awake and you’ve spent all that time watching me. It is infernal, this watching.”

“I am sorry you find my presence so objectionable,” Valjean says stiffly, irritably.

“It is not,” Javert corrects him strangely, the words ground out slow, “your presence that I object to.”

Valjean would try to get another answer from him on this topic, but Javert falls prey to yet another horrific coughing fit, pulling up an arm as if to hide it in his sleeve. Valjean quickly brings him a basin as he retches, laying a hand on Javert’s back as the inspector holds the bowl, Valjean’s free hand pulling back his silvering hair, which is softer than Valjean would have thought it to be given that he had felt his whiskers.

Through the thin fabric of his borrowed shirt, Javert’s heat is more than evident, soaking into Valjean’s leathered palm. He should move his hand, but the rounded knobs of Javert’s spine fit so neatly there and the heat of Javert now is so very different from his river cold, from a cursory brush of skin in the factory; Valjean leaves his hand where it rests, and if Javert lingers at his touch even after he leans up from the bowl, Valjean can prove nothing.

After a moment, however, Javert coughs once more but dryly, a hacking thing that rattles his broken chest and makes his whole frame jolt with a wince Valjean feels all the way up his arm. Javert wrenches himself away from Valjean’s hand, pulling his body to itself as quickly as his battered spine will allow.

“Have done with this farce and kill me,” Javert spits. Valjean reacts as if slapped, rocking back on his heels from the force of the blow.

“It is your right, after all, to do what you please now that you so have me in your power,” Javert continues, unheeding, unheeding, always charging forward blindly without his eyes and God, is this what Valjean was, so infuriatingly sightless?

“You have an overdeveloped sense of vengeance,” Valjean accuses Javert, voice hoarse around the words he cannot let himself say. “That’s going to get you in trouble, someday.”

Javert scowls at him. “It already has,” he mutters, and after that refuses to speak to Valjean for the rest of the night.

Javert keeps his secrets for himself despite the way he has always so ferreted them out in others. He is prone to his own forms of blindness, and having only looked inwards once, he is unlikely to do so again, though Valjean does not know of this occurrence. The inspector cannot abide a mystery, but Valjean is willing to solve this puzzle slowly.

All they have is time, now. Chained as they ever were, and if he’s being honest with himself (as he reminds himself he must be), Valjean does not truly want to be freed.

* * *

On the sixteenth night, something of a détente is reached.

The whole day Javert will not meet Valjean’s eyes. Valjean senses Javert watching him constantly from the bed, but Javert’s gaze slips away from Valjean’s face every time he tries to catch it. The chase frustrates him; Valjean has never considered himself a man to pry but the secrets that Valjean keeps are torturous things that keep them both awake at night to see them sleeping half the day.

Considering turnabout fair play, Valjean watches Javert as well, keeping a studious eye on his charge as he moves about the house, fetching things and writing his daily letter to Cosette.

Javert freed of his articles is a turtle is without his shell, though the comparison is perhaps unflattering to the turtle; Javert has no patience to speak of when injured. Stewing in his own thoughts, the man alternates between black humors where he sinks into despair and angry rages where he demands to be released from his bandages and left to his own devices, a request that Valjean can only deny. Valjean has no doubt that if he were to acquiesce, Javert would only injure himself further, and not only because too much activity will destroy all the progress of his healing.

Javert shivers when he thinks Valjean does not watch him. With the rain still withheld this summer is beginning to grow blindingly hot, and Javert sits in a beam of sunlight, but the Seine’s cold has a hold on him and his fever is not yet entirely gone, if his cough and his tremors are indicative of anything.

On the sixteenth night after the sun has set, a chill creeps in through the window, setting Javert to shivering. Valjean offers, once, and only once, to buy Javert a new greatcoat, a new hat.

Javert thinks for a moment before shaking his head; “there is no need,” he says gruffly. “What use would I have for a greatcoat?”

“To keep you warm?” Valjean hazards, shivering at the implication in Javert’s words; _‘what use would a greatcoat have for me,’_ and knows that they are not talking about the greatcoat alone, if they ever were at all.

“Would it?” Javert asks, and he is too serious now, too heavy. The pause hangs between them, sullen and far more introspective than Valjean would prefer Javert to be; he seems to be on the brink of lapsing into one of his depressions before he shakes his head once more, this time ostensibly to clear it.

“No, I have no use for a greatcoat,” Javert says, musing, wondering. “Besides, it was old, and full of holes. Not to mention singed. It is just as well that the river took it.”

Javert pauses again, this time thoughtfully. “Though I would like a hat,” he says, adding darkly; “assuming I ever get out of this bed.”

At this Valjean cannot help but laugh, the sound a short huff of incredulity at Javert’s shift in mood. Javert harrumphs in frustration, crossing his arms over his bandaged chest. Forgetting once more how much that will hurt, Javert huffs once more, this time in annoyed capitulation to his body’s demands before laying his arms at his side, frowning down at his hands as if they have betrayed him.

Still, Javert makes the motion for a rosary when he thinks.

“Would you like to play a game of chess?” Valjean asks.

Javert responds to the suggestion the way he would to a challenge. His spine straightens and his eyes gain an old spark that Valjean cannot even pretend he is not desperately glad to see returning.

That night they play six games of chess. Javert takes black, Valjean picks white. Javert plays almost entirely on the offensive, an aggressive style that makes sacrifices almost indiscriminately to obtain pieces where Valjean prefers more elaborate traps to his play. Neither of them are grandmasters, or otherwise possessed of great ability, but they are evenly matched, and decently skilled. Valjean himself learned to play years ago with Cosette, but he has no idea where Javert came by his knowledge of the game.

The chessboard occupies them for the rest of the night, the light of the half moon that filters first through the clouds and the window tracking slowly along the folds of the sheet over Javert’s lap. Time passes as it pleases, until the moon has gone from the view of the window and the only illumination left in the room is the light from Valjean’s two silver candlesticks.

They end with a tied score when in a fit of pique at losing his advantage, Javert flips the small board and declares his own exhaustion while Valjean gathers the scattered pieces, irritated snarl etched on his face.

Valjean should not find this endearing, but he does. It is good to see Javert so human, and Valjean had already known that the former inspector does not take his losses well.

* * *

On the seventeenth night, the two of them find themselves deep in conversation, Valjean having earlier that day discovered Javert’s propensity for argument if given the correct outlet for his opinions.

Throughout the day and well into the night they bicker constantly, argument seeming to be Javert’s favorite pastime, the man overflowing with disagreements waiting to be voiced. Their topics of conversation range from the state of the sewer system to the true victors at Waterloo, Javert making the case for Wellington, Valjean picking the opposite side for the sake of argument, delighting in the spark of fire Javert possesses when he finds any sort of competition, a point to be proved.

As much as he hates to lose, sparring in any sense keeps Javert fully engaged on the task at hand. To this end Valjean employs the chessboard, a deck of cards, a set of dominoes. Any and every contest he can devise he sets before Javert, interspersing it all with as much conversation as Javert’s damaged lungs will allow. Prolonged dialogue sees him grow stronger, more confident. With every victory pride returns, and the challenge sees him sparking. His hands moving with more and more animation, Javert makes his points, sharp stabbing things when he thinks himself clever, grand sweeping motions when he wishes something dismissed.

It is a marvel to see Javert animated. Much as it irritates Valjean to be so constantly contradicted, he did invite the battle and Javert is a formidable opponent in this arena as well, having no compunctions or reservations when it comes to speaking his mind here when in other times he had shied from it.

Valjean is shocked to learn of his opinions on the prison system, more than anything else. Javert catches him staring as his speech grows more impassioned than irritated, turning a piercing glare on Valjean.

“What?” He snaps, almost defensively, turning his spine out against the headboard, expression fierce and haughty. He expects to be criticized, Valjean realizes slowly, the understanding blooming warm behind his breastbone.

“Nothing,” Valjean replies slowly, smile uncurling on his face. “Your opinions simply speak of more compassion than I would have expected from you, monsieur l’inspector.”

Javert flinches, whole body recoiling slightly at Valjean’s words, spine coming back off the headboard to curl inwards on itself. “It is only sense,” Javert corrects him, mumbling his denials into the covers upon his lap. “And do not call me that.”

“Why not?” Valjean asks, surprised, curious.

“Because it is not true; I am not an inspector any longer,” Javert replies, still not looking at Valjean. “I resigned before I went to the Pont-au-Change.”

“You resigned?” Valjean exclaims. The very notion boggles him. Javert without his service, without the law— there is no fathoming it.

Javert, for his part, offers no immediate illumination on the subject. He instead stares at his hands, fingers absently rubbing against one another in a repetitive motion as he thinks.

“Why?” Valjean prods him, and perhaps he has grown too accustomed today to hunting down Javert’s lines of reasoning, but Valjean needs to understand. Javert is a mystery he needs very much to unravel; the man sits in his home and convalesces but he is only so recently human, so newly realized. Valjean is surprised every time at his humanity; changing his bandages he is reassured of it every time, in the same moment that he is reminded of Javert’s fragile mortality.

“You would know,” Javert seethes at him, scowling.

Valjean blinks. He does not, and says as much.

Blinking himself, Javert throws a scowl at Valjean, moving to cross his arms over his chest out of habit. At the pressure the motion puts on his ribs, Javert winces so slightly that Valjean would have missed it had he not become accustomed to watching Javert so closely. Javert, of course, is too stubborn to move his arms back to where they were, and bears the pain in a way that Valjean could easily believe is practiced having seen the scars before. He finds himself imagining Javert in the station, insisting that he is fit to work and patrol even as his injuries ached—

“I am no longer worthy of the title,” Javert admits, voice rumbling his damaged chest, spine pressed up once more against the headboard to keep it straight as his broken body will still not bear its own weight.

Seeing Valjean’s presumably dubious expression, Javert shakes his head once, wincing slightly at the pull on his neck. “No,” he corrects himself, “it is not a matter of worthiness. Rather—“ Javert breaks off and stares down at his hands, fingers turning the jet rosary that Valjean wears like an anchor around his neck.

“All my life,” Javert says slowly, weighing out each word in turn and still refusing to look up, “I have followed the law, and known justice supreme. To rebel was to die,” he explains to the sheets, “to fall prey to recidivism; my father was a convict, you see, and my mother a fortune teller. No matter what I did I was to be without society’s good graces; blood wins out, as it always does,” and this last Javert says with odd ruefulness, bitter and resigned, dark amusement covering his tone.

“So, I made a choice,” Javert continues, and this time he looks out the window, though he still turns away; “What does society hate so much as a criminal, or a criminal’s child? Obviously, it is the policeman, and those that keep society’s laws, the necessary evils that inconvenience them and ferret out society’s ills.

It was not a hard choice,” Javert admits, after a pause, frowning.

He pauses to breathe and when he speaks again Javert’s voice is plaintive and cracking, an old tree breaking in the storm. “I attempted to raise my station but I failed, as I had always known I would. Everything I have believed has been wrong; there is more than one justice and I found that I could not serve them both at once, and to fail either was to commit a sin akin to murder, of the law or of a good man—“ Javert shakes his head, slow and low and full of mourning.

Understanding creeps in over Valjean like the water back to haunt him, cold snaking down his neck with a finger of chill. Here are the answers to the questions on his tattered lists, here are the words he could not find language for spelled out in horrible truths he must object to but still cannot voice. In the small Parisian apartment that has contained so many years of feeling, Valjean suffers an earthquake of the soul, and unrelenting the world continues to turn.

“So I fell,” Javert finishes, resigned, spineless, hollow, empty. “I could not make a choice a second time, and for my pride in thinking I could rise from filth I was cast down back from whence I came. I could not arrest you, Jean Valjean. You are a saint wearing the skin of a man and a convict’s brands,” Javert laughs, and it is a hollow sound. “I could not condemn an angel to hell, so I would send myself in your place.”

Javert laughs, just once, and the sound is a terrible, awful thing, no mirth or light or happiness to it, only bewildered agony at the cruelties of life and fate. “Blood wins out,” Javert explains, looking back at Valjean when he startles, and though he cannot see his face he still hears Javert’s feral smile breaking, slipping on a countenance that was never meant to wear expressions.

“You have not fallen,” Valjean protests, and he is quieter than he should be; his horror is greater than his capacity for speech. What should be a shout instead is a whisper; Valjean has struggled for years with his own demons and barely faced them at every turn. The reveal of Javert’s is that of a foe greater than Valjean can fight, a burden to heavy even for Atlas. It is no wonder that Javert broke under the strain.

“No,” Javert, corrects him, heedless of Valjean’s own turmoil. “No, I did fall, but you have caught me. But to what end?” Javert asks, and he is tired, now, voice slipping into tired wonder as it did when he was with fever.

Valjean wants to reply, but he has no real answer, not that Javert would accept. Valjean is not certain, himself, and in the moments of hesitation he takes, Javert has succumbed to his exhaustion once more, or at the least pretends to, and Valjean is too much of a coward to call his bluff.

* * *

On the eighteenth night, Valjean falls asleep once more in the armchair and not his own bed, worried over Javert’s lingering cough that besets him even in his sleep. Valjean is wary to leave him, afraid that the former inspector will drown in his own fluids despite the doctor’s assurances this morning that Javert is now clear of the worst.

Words cannot banish Valjean’s exhaustion, or his worry. The more Javert sleeps the less that he does; Valjean finds that he is reluctant to let Javert out of his sight in any way, and when he sleeps Javert’s mind goes somewhere Valjean cannot follow him. From the sound of his dreams they are not kind places, and Valjean finds himself remembering the cast-off story of a child born in a jail, who grew up iron and belonged to the police. Valjean wonders if Javert has ever had cause for softer dreams; we the readers know that most likely, he has not.

For his own part, Valjean’s dreams have not grown softer. If anything they are sharper, more strangely defined, though the river’s cold is replaced with the searing heat that should have come after; Valjean dreams of Javert in Hell, bearing the lash with a smile beatific snarl so that Valjean would not have to, even as the burning whip charred and cracked his skin. In Valjean dreams Javert’s eyes are burnt out pits, and his throat is cut and crushed, two blackened handprints wrapping it ‘round. Despite his blindness still he sees; even in the dream Javert’s regard is a terrible thing, and now it is entirely a horror, to know the lengths that Javert would go to—

Valjean wakes to find Javert calling his name, pulled from the dream by a familiar command if not in so many words: _come back, damn you._

“Valjean!” Javert hisses, a sense of urgency in his voice. “Valjean, wake up!”

On the eighteenth night Valjean wakes with Javert calling his name in a tone that Valjean has never heard from him, not the convict or the mayor or the man on the run. Javert hisses his name again and Valjean marvels at the raw concern the inspector tries so desperately to hide, and ponders at the irony of his life.

Valjean reaches a hand out into the darkness. After a beat of hesitation, Javert winds their fingers together, long digits threading through Valjean’s own blunter ones, taking the offered hand for the lifeline it is, though Valjean is not sure for which one of them it was cast out.

“You were crying out in your sleep,” Javert mutters, looking away to hide his distress. The silver candlesticks Valjean left glowing on the mantle light his face strangely; the hollows of his cheeks stand in relief but his eyes like pits are cast into shadow.

Outside the window Paris is still beset with clouds, a storm hovering unpoured in the air for days now, cloaking the city in humidity and still heat. Despite the candles the room is dark, the last of their flames sputtering out as the wax runs out. In any case, Valjean is situated so that the greatest beams of their light are not on his face, and he is glad of the darkness and the things it can hide, the privacy it can give.

Holding the hand of his jailer, Jean Valjean weeps where only the night wind can see him. His tears taste like salt and the bagne that spit them out, but Valjean tells himself he can feel Javert’s pulse through his thumb, and that Javert cannot heart the creak of the chair as Valjean’s shoulders shake.

“You were crying out in your sleep,” Javert starts, letting the words hang in his air of indecision.

Valjean squeezes his fingers, a wordless thanks. “I am fine,” Valjean assures him, but they both know that he is lying through his teeth. Even though the cross hangs halfway down his chest, beneath his shirt the rosary feels as a noose on his neck, or an iron collar welded on. Javert lets the falsehood lie, and Valjean is thankful for that, having not expected that one small mercy.

“Do you remember your dream?” Javert asks instead, his voice carefully neutral, still quiet.

“No,” Valjean says, thinking of the bright red of fresh blood, the smell of sulfur mixed with iron, the way Javert had smiled blindly beneath the lash.

“No,” Valjean says again, “I do not remember.”

“You are lying,” Javert points out this time, strangely unsure of himself, as if he cares whether or not his observation will be welcome.

Valjean swallows thickly. “I know,” he admits, and Javert squeezes his fingers back.

Outside, the last of the moon is peeking through the clouds, but still it has not rained.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> If you can find the Princess Bride quote in the text, you'll get a cookie.


	3. And Every Second, More

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry this took so long; things have gotten a bit nuts in my work schedule lately. I agonized a bit over this chapter; as you will notice, the ratings and tags have changed. This is my first time; please be gentle. I've never written porn before.

_“Doomed, madam?”_  
_“To be together. Until one of us dies.”_  
_“I've done that already, and I haven't the slightest intention of ever doing it again.”_  
— William Goldman, _The Princess Bride_

* * *

On the nineteenth night, having spent the whole day lost in thought about the ones previous, Valjean cannot leave well enough alone.

“You called me a saint,” he says slowly, apropos of nothing, letting the words scatter out into the silent room between them.

“You are a saint,” Javert agrees readily enough. “You saved an idiot and a traitor—“

“You are not a traitor,” Valjean interrupts him, and is surprised to hear his own voice rumble.

“But you agree that the boy is an idiot?” Javert asks, and Valjean swears he hears a grin, though Javert’s face is too hard to see clearly with the clouds closed over the stars and the moon finally new. The light from the candlesticks is not enough; Valjean must find his own way in the dark. He has not been so lost for a long time, and words, like actions, do not come easily.

“He is marrying my daughter,” Valjean says uncomfortably, “it would be wrong to start our acquaintance with insults.”

Javert laughs a bit at that and it is not hard, Valjean finds, to imagine the way that his face moves when he does so. Valjean does not need to see them to know the lines that would have to shift and crease around thin lips ticked up slightly to let loose the sound of laughter, the way Javert’s face must be twitching around the noise. There is a difference, too, between this sound and Javert’s usual laugh; it is less startled, more genuine, this being actual (though grudging) amusement as opposed to the bitter, hollow noise of these nights past.

How startling this is, to find that Valjean has come to know this man in such a small (enormous) span of time. In nineteen nights (and countless years) he has learned to see without looking, feeling his way blindly around the edges of a man he has known all his life and never seen clearly. Valjean has defined him for a lifetime by the objects and the titles he wears, but he is learning to do otherwise: this is Javert, who thinks that prisoners should have shoes and has opinions on the concepts of fate and God that have little to do with one another. Javert, who hates to read so he makes Valjean read to him, who sits in his bed and plays chess but tips the board when he loses. But, also, (and Valjean cannot forget this) this is Javert, who brought the lash down too many times on Jean-le-cric’s back; who dogged his steps in Paris and Montreuil; who went to the Barricades and jumped off a bridge—

Perhaps, Valjean realizes, that Javert is all these men, if only in the same way that Valjean was Ultime Fauchelevent, was Jean-le-cric, was even the mayor. All at once and one at a time, changing like any other human being with the passage of time.

It is strange to think of Javert as a man who can change. All these nights Valjean has been grappling with the truth of it, the horrible reality of Javert’s mortal humanity. Fragility was not a word he had ever attributed to the inspector, but as Javert had pointed out, he is no longer that man, or at least no longer that man alone.

There is a reality to Javert that Valjean can barely comprehend, feeling around the edges of it with blind hands tucked up to his sides. Valjean has been examining his memories ever since he pulled Javert from the river, testing his images of the man, weighing them against each other in turn as Valjean tries trying to align all the people Javert has been with the people they are both becoming. Because it is not Javert alone who is changing; proximity makes them different animals, and Valjean can feel old certainties slipping away with every hour that passes.

“What do you see,” Valjean asks quietly, “when you look at me?”

Javert stills at the question. All the small motions of a man at rest cease, the former inspector holding himself as stiff as he can while the question hangs in the air between them.

“It is too dark to see,” Javert hedges, almost hesitant.

Valjean shakes his head. “No,” he corrects him, “you have seen me in the daylight, too. You think that I cannot feel you watching, but you have watched me this whole day, and every day you were awake before it.”

This day, especially, has been the worst of this. All day the apartment was too small, more enclosed than normal. Rising first, Valjean had woken to find his hand still tangled with Javert’s, his neck stiff from yet another night spent in the armchair. The heat has been oppressive, and the humidity worse. Valjean quickly went down to his shirt alone, rolling the sleeves up and pinning them, not caring that this made the scarring on his wrists apparent. Javert knows the truth of him already, and it is strangely relieving to no longer have the need to hide. Too heated to move, Valjean spent most of the day dozing lightly in the armchair, lost in thought, but several times he has felt Javert’s gaze on him, piercing through the fog and lingering in places where perhaps it did not used to.

“I think you have spent a lifetime looking,” Valjean continues, and he is not sure of this but the slight way that Javert’s breath hitches at the words confirms his suspicions.

“I would know what you have seen,” Valjean finishes simply, but this is not a simple thing. He carries the words like glass objects, places them at Javert’s lap as he comes to sit before him, folding his hands in his lap to stop from reaching for his rosary.

With the onus on him to move, Javert is still. His hands twitch uselessly in his lap, long fingers straining off the bed as if to reach before thinking better of it. Even this close Valjean cannot see him; the air in the apartment is cloying and thick with water and silence where it fills in between them. Despite the candles there is an absence of light, only the faint smudges of shade to indicate where Javert is separated from the objects that surround him, shapes running into one another like a painting submerged in water.

Outside the thunder rumbles in the distance with the promise of a flood, and Valjean thinks of the way the river in Montreuil-sur-Mer would strain its banks in the summer, and how the Seine swells her embankments every spring with rain and melted snow. In the autumn Toulon was freezing with the wind off the sea, and never has Valjean seen a winter that could stop the tides. Javert sits in his bed, the air between them charged with slow heat and the promise of lightning, and Valjean thinks that he has been drowning for years and only stayed afloat by the grace of God.

Valjean hears an intake of breath, and feels beneath his frame the way the bed shifts with Javert’s unsteady movements, slight fidgets and motions as he opens his mouth to speak and thinks better of it, thin lips closing with a faint whisper of exhaled air. He knows, suddenly, as if he had known for some nights or a lifetime, that he has not been drowning alone.

“I think,” Valjean says quietly, “that you do as I have done, and see a symbol where there should be a man.”

“I doubt you have ever thought of yourself as a symbol,” Javert replies in hoarse tones, and again his fingers reach, the shadow of his hand discernible on the sheets, wavering in the dark.

“No,” Valjean agrees as he takes Javert’s offered hand, admitting “but I have thought so of you.”

“You called me a good man, but I do not think that is correct. I have hated,” Valjean confesses, Javert’s hand jumping in his, “but I have loved, too.”

This time Javert’s intake of breath is louder, and Valjean cannot help but lean in as Javert does, until they are breathing each other’s air, until they are not breathing at all.

Javert’s lips are not soft, though their touch is. The moment is unbearably chaste for all the gravity it carries; by the clock this is nothing, yet in the larger sense it is everything. They have been approaching this moment for their whole lives. Fate has always conspired to bring them together. The register has always shown this end for them, and It is only now that they have met, truly. Valjean does not need to see Javert to know him; the darkness can be enough. His ignorance will cure with time.

Outside, the storm that has been hanging over Paris takes a breath, and the air is sucked quietly from the room, though it may well be their proximity that has done this.

There is a pause of single heartbeat and then Javert nearly lunges, pressing his tongue to Valjean’s lips. Valjean obligingly opens his mouth to let him in; Javert tastes of salt and the inevitable, the ocean spray Toulon’s children can never wash out of their lungs. In his ears Valjean hears a rush of blood, the pounding of his human heart, and all the things that Javert did not say.

When they part for air they do so unwillingly; Javert pulls at Valjean’s lip with his teeth, reluctant to let him go. Feeling as though he cannot possibly get enough air in his lungs, Valjean finds that he is gripping Javert by his shirt lapels. He is not sure, exactly, when that happened. Yet he does not want to let go.

Valjean tilts his head up up to catch Javert’s mouth once more, and when the former inspecor reaches down to meet him there is something that burns inside Valjean, coiling low in his belly just as it sits weighted on his chest.

“I am only a man, as you, too, are only a man. We are human, Javert,” Valjean tells him, letting their weight pull them together. “We are men, and nothing more, and nothing less.”

The proof of that is more than evident; against Valjean’s chest, another’s heartbeat, wild and drumming out a counterpoint to how he first encountered it, hammering now behind Javert’s healing ribs as if he had been running all his life. Between his legs, a hardness that cannot be mistaken for anything but what it is, and when the storm lets loose its lightning, the glory of it fills the room.

With his fingers Valjean searches Javert’s face but finds his eyes closed once more; dipping close he presses his mouth to Javert’s, and waits, prodding as much as he dares until at last Javert lets him in, and they kiss like they are drowning.

Everything is slow and hot, and outside the storm is breaking. The first drops of rain land on the sill and bounce into the room, smelling of lightning and clean water as the skies let go their catch. The water does nothing to abate the heat, only rid it of its oppression.

Javert reaches a hand up to cup the side of Valjean’s face and another to his chest, searching thumb brushing against his nipple through his shirt. Valjean moans his surprise into Javert’s mouth, and feels the smile that the former inspector gives back. Their every point of contact is lit with slow heat, the air between them dancing with St. Elmo’s fire.

It is not enough.

Leaning back to better access their clothes, Valjean paws at the collars of their shirts before impatient with his shaking hands, he rips and tears at the fabric separating Javert and himself, leaving Javert’s torso bare save for his bandages. Buttons scatter to the ground in hasty fumbling, the noise mixing well enough with the fall of rain. Freed from its confines, the rosary follows the pull of gravity to hang between them, catching the faint light from the candlesticks on its old jet beads.

Valjean has not done this before; all his life he has been chaste and for the life of him he cannot remember why, rational thought escaping him. Javert is living and breathing against him and Valjean’s head is full of clouds, his blood too hot in his veins and it burns out his thoughts, leaves him inflamed to his senses.

But for all it thrills him the hunger in their bodies is more than Valjean has ever known. Despite himself this needing frightens him; the last time he starved he robbed a holy man, before that broke a window pane. His nightmare rises unbidden; he feels Javert’s lips against his and tastes blood. Valjean pulls back, shies away, spooks like the nervous animal he has always tried not to be.

Javert grabs him by the collar, growling, and drags him back, teeth clicking and noses bumping as the two of them scramble for purchase.

Javert winds a hand into Valjean’s curls, fingers tightening against the back of his skull, pulling him up towards Javert’s height as they both straighten their spines, their long curve in towards one another reaching its natural conclusion.

“No more running,” he demands, sounding for all the world as if he was dragged from the river yesterday, his voice harsh and low, raked over coals and the sharp remnants of his conviction.

Valjean agrees wordlessly and lets Javert press him down; they tip together and are falling, Valjean’s back meeting the sheets in a crash that nearly knocks the air from his lungs though perhaps that is simply the way that Javert has levered a knee between his legs.

Outside the storm lets loose a howl of fury and for a moment a stripe of light through the window blinds him. Lightning falls and the whole window is lit with it, the brightness filling Valjean’s eyes and leaving stars in its wake.

Valjean blinks them away and finds Javert looking down. Thunder rolls and the light from the window frames him, the lines of his face lost in shadow until the darkness too has faded. Valjean looks up and there is Javert, illuminated at last by the storm and the soft light of the candlesticks. His eyes are gray, but only just, the irises tight in a ring around pupils that would swallow him, contracting in another sudden flash of light as the storm rages over Paris.

For a fleeting moment Javert hangs above him. Then he is falling, and his mouth is on Valjean’s again, and the knee between his legs increases its pressure, making Valjean keen with wordless want. Though Valjean is mortified to let the sound loose, Javert answers it with one of his own, growling as he bends to bite lightly at the junction of Valjean’s throat, working his mouth at the junction of corded muscle before trailing down to put his tongue to a nipple, making Valjean writhe, his body aflame with sensation.

They are lost, but they are starving too; they have been starving for years, and that, that is something they can solve, a need they can try to sate when the first threatens to overwhelm them. They are not directionless men by nature; unmoored they are at sea and the slightest wave will upset them, tossed by unknown waters.

Valjean finds that he is no longer afraid to drown. Or, rather, that he is no longer afraid of what drowning might mean.

Valjean breaks the kiss and turns his head to taste the summer sweat along Javert’s jawline, the smell heady and different from the sharp, clean scent of the rain. The former inspector groans and this time there is nothing to muffle the sound, dark and rich where it escapes from Javert’s kiss-bruised mouth. Valjean continues to taste him because he can; he knows not what he does but he would wring more noises from Javert if he could, wants to hear every sound the man can make that would be so alive as this.

To this end he mouths his way down Javert’s chest, pauses at a nipple that stands stiff through the cloth of his bandages, using his tongue to make him moan. Valjean’s feet dangle from the bed as he moves and he realizes that their position is tenuous in a bed so small as this, and growling his irritation flips Javert onto his back, reversing their positions.

The startled noise Javert makes is almost pain, but not entirely, something in it that is anything but, startling to them both. At the sound, Valjean freezes, worried that he has damaged the former inspector’s back. Javert only laughs at his hesitation, sounding helpless and startled, as wild around his unseen edges as Valjean feels throughout his entire soul.

On the nineteenth night the storm rages at last and Javert kisses Valjean there and there and there, hungry and openmouthed as if to devour him. Valjean touches him because he is afraid not to, presses close as he dares because he has never been close enough. He shoves their chests together, scars to scars where they are both bare, and still he needs to be nearer to Javert; Valjean wants to sink in past the skin until there is no room left for the lies they have told themselves.

Between them hangs the rosary and a thousand years of history only recently examined. Valjean feels the rain on his back through the shirt he still has not shed completely, and fumbling, he reaches down to palm at the bulge in Javert’s trousers, making him shout once, hips bucking before he can help himself.

Unwilling to be idle, Javert brings his own hand to Valjean’s hip, and pulls at the waist of his trousers before long fingers find the fastenings there and cleverly have them open. His prize freed, Javert takes hold of Valjean and smears the bead of moisture that rises from the head of his prick as Valjean swallows a shout of his own, unable to stop the helpless thrust of his hips.

Despite Javert’s hand insistent on his prick, Valjean is able to work Javert free of his trousers without ripping the fabric or otherwise unduly ruining the garment.

Once has him bare, Valjean cannot help but look at the things he has uncovered, though the light is insufficient. Still, he sees outlines, shapes painted in curved lines without real angles. Valjean traces with his hands what he can reach, marveling at the way Javert’s prick jumps in his hand, the quick curse he lets out when Valjean begins to pump the shaft, doing his best to mirror the motions that Javert makes with him.

Javert trembles under him, arching as best he can into Valjean’s hand, determined not to falter at his own grip, increasing his pace on Valjean’s prick. The sounds Javert is making are driving Valjean out of his mind; his entire body feels stretched tight along a single line of tension, a bowstring ready to snap. The free arm that braces him above Javert is trembling with the effort of keeping Valjean upright.

An idea striking him, Valjean shifts to press their lengths together, pushing at Javert’s hand with his own until it opens, and then they are wrapped around both their pricks. Their hands are rough and there is almost too much friction, but it is enough. Someone in the room is practically keening from need; it takes Valjean a moment to realize that it most likely is him.

The heat that has been coiling in Valjean’s belly winds itself impossibly tighter; he is approaching some sort of precipice, and from the sounds he is making, it is apparent that Javert is as well. Outside the storm rages and the two of them are kissing like the world is ending, small noises and grand noises escaping into the night that collapses between them, burning suspended with all the intensity of a star.

Valjean moves without thinking. Bending down, he kisses Javert once more before turning away, blindly mouthing at his jaw. Valjean knows not what he searches for until he finds it, laving his tongue over a place that makes Javert buck into his hand, a startled moan ripped out of him.

Determined to hear more of that sound Valjean prods at the spot again before sucking, delighting almost viciously in the way that Javert arches for him, coming in their joined hands.

Tension bleeds from Javert almost immediately, but his gaze almost sharpens; Valjean realizes that he has been feeling its weight this whole encounter, and that it has ceased to be a burden.

Javert’s hand on him increases its pace, bringing Valjean’s hand with it, Javert’s spend easing their way. It is only one, perhaps two firm pulls before Valjean has followed him over the edge. Valjean shouts something that could have been a name or else a prayer, and his arm shakes wildly, his whole body wracked with the release of its tension. Levering himself down, he is careful not to fall upon Javert, wary once more of his ribs, afraid of crushing them.

Spent, the both of them are quick to find exhaustion.

For the first time since the river, Valjean finds that he is not only unable to fight his need for sleep, he is unwilling as well. He lays himself down carefully, at last removing both Javert’s and his own shirt, using them to wipe away the mess of their coupling before discarding the ruined garments, letting them fall upon the floor. Their trousers Valjean leaves on, if only for the ease; they are both tucked away again, and mostly clean. Removing their trousers would make for a difficulty of maneuvering that neither of them were energetic enough to handle, at present.

The guest bed is too small to accommodate two men easily, but Valjean cannot bring himself to leave. He settles in before Javert as best he can, tucking himself closer to the wall beneath the window, feeling the slight splash of the rain on his face, a welcome contrast to the fever of summer and the night’s activity. If Javert presses close to him they will have room enough, and so Valjean opens his arms, waiting for Javert to find him.

Javert is hesitant to touch him, now, for all that he was not so before. He reaches a hand out, moving towards Valjean but pauses, his fingers trailing just above Valjean’s chest, waiting in the air. Valjean waits, and Javert’s indecision seems to right itself, his hand coming to rest on Valjean’s chest, fingers tangling in the rosary as Valjean pulls him close, because he can and because he is still unwilling to let go.

Javert settles in well enough, tension still bled out of them both, making them soft where they couldn’t be, before. Javert bends, and Valjean bends, and they are fitted together, face to face, and if they are in darkness they are there together. Valjean reaches a hand out twist with Javert’s, and the rosary string fits between them, beads wearing shapes into their palms.

“You have the rosary,” Javert mumbles into his collarbone as sleeps comes to claim them. “I had wondered if the river had taken it, like my greatcoat.”

“It was too close to your heart, I think, for you to lose,” Valjean replies, feeling hazy around his own edges. “I can give it back, if you wish,” he says, but Javert is already unconscious, pulse slow and regular against Valjean’s chest.

Under his hand Valjean feels a radiant star of warmness, his palm pressed against the small of Javert’s back, feeling the place where an inspector once carried the entirety of his spine, and all the things it wore.

* * *

Morning breaks through the window with the last of the rain still wet on the sill. The sun slips in through the widow on soft tread, creeping across his face until Valjean wakes with the heat of it, light pressing on his closed eyelids, his body stiff and complaining.

For a moment, Valjean thinks that he is simply waking up once more in the armchair. Certainly, he can hear Javert’s labored breathing, and he is uncomfortable, which points towards that conclusion. But Valjean recognizes, next, the way that Javert’s spine curves towards his front, the arch of his throat bared for him to do with as he pleases.

Valjean finds himself arrested by that fact, his breath catching in his lungs. Simple trust is no simple thing for them. And yet there in his hand is Javert’s hand, tangled between his legs are Javert’s legs, and beneath his fingers Valjean feels a heartbeat that is not his yet has matched his, slow and steady and thoroughly human. At the junction of his throat and his jaw is a darkening bruise, the place where Valjean sucked at his pulse and marked him, proof that last night was no dream but reality.

Valjean cannot remember the last time he shared a bed with another human being. The closest he comes is that of his sister and her children, but that life is so far gone to him as to have belonged to someone else, separated from him by nineteen years of imprisonment. In a very real sense, this is the first that Valjean has shared his bed with someone who knew him. Leaving the biblical alone, Javert is the first to have seen his scars, the only person to have ever uncovered them after the pains that Valjean has taken to keep them hidden. Furthermore, Javert was the one who inflicted a number of Valjean’s scars.

Probing at the thought, Valjean realizes that it does not hurt him; the most he can feel towards it now is faint regret, and the last traces of an old rage whose absence he is unaccustomed to.

 _‘This is what Javert does to me,’_ Valjean thinks, and he cannot bring himself to be angry in the slightest, burying his nose in the Javert’s hair, letting the sunlight warm them both.

If he falls asleep again, there is no one to know but God.

* * *

When Valjean wakes the second time, he finds that Javert is already awake, and has been watching him, rolled over at some point so that now they face one another.

In the light of day, eye contact is such a small, simple thing. Valjean cannot understand why they had been so wary of it.

“Good morning,” he says, and his voice is hoarse with sleep, and huskier too.

Javert flushes somewhat, but does not turn away. “Good morning,” Javert repeats, irritated. “That’s all you have to say?”

“But it is a good morning,” Valjean points out, and he cannot stop the smile that it forming on his face any more than he could stop the sun from rising. He feels like a fool; this too, must be what Javert does to him. Valjean has always been somewhat mindless in his presence, though before now it has always been fear that drove him to the point of distraction. To have it be happiness instead that makes a fool of him is nothing so much as a miracle.

“What are you smiling for?” Javert grumbles. The light on his face is bright, illuminating faint stubble, making known the bruise Valjean has sucked into the pulsepoint at his throat.

“Nothing,” Valjean replies truthfully, trying not to laugh at the insanity his life has become. There is an absurdity to this morning that cannot be denied, that _this_ of all places is where they have found one another, where they have fallen at last now that all that was thrown to the wind to scatter has landed.

“Everything, I suppose,” Valjean amends, and he feels very much though he would sing, if singing were a talent he knew.

Javert blinks at him once before he moves to sit up, and demands that Valjean help change his bandages, which are still stained from the sweat of several days, and dampened from last night’s rain as well.

If the bath he gives Javert leads to other things, then, well.

Worse mornings have been had. Worse mornings have been had, recently, even. And what they do between them is nothing to be ashamed of, or that would not benefit from exposure to the light.

* * *

“You are not a traitor,” Valjean says that afternoon, the chess board laid out between them in an attempt to maintain some distance now that they know they may be close enough.

Javert shifts uncomfortably, reaching up to his neck to finger the rosary Valjean had finally returned. “I am what I am,” Javert says, “and I have never rebelled, never once questioned or faltered—“ he swallows.

“It is not,” Javert tries, calling to mind a conversation from nights past, “your presence I object to, but rather the questions that your presence raises. I have never had cause to examine myself or my world before you; you push me to things I cannot fathom, questions I can barely articulate, much less answer.”

He moves a knight to capture a pawn, adding the piece to the neat line of white pieces along the edge of the board. Valjean retaliates almost immediately with one of his bishops, adding the black knight to the ranks of its fellows in Valjean’s list of victories. Javert frowns at the board before looking up at Valjean, who cannot help his smile.

“I think that you know how to find these answers,” He tells Javert gently. “Your profession was that of investigator, at heart, was it not? Surely you are still equipped to find the answers you seek.”

“I cannot even form the question,” Javert admits helplessly, shaking his head as he takes Valjean’s remaining rook.

“Perhaps I would be able to help you find what it is you look for. I have traveled to a place where my soul was shattered, too,” he tells Javert, voice carefully neutral.

“Toulon?” Javert asks, moving a pawn.

“No,” Valjean corrects him, “afterwards. Hate was not enough to sustain me,” he admits, “but society could not love me, or even relate to me as a man. I was treated worse than a dog, lost and beaten and nearly feral with my anger and my hunger.”

“What did you do?” Javert asks, and the judgment in his voice is hard to mistake, though it is clear that Javert is trying not to be harsh with him.

“I stole the silver of a holy man,” Valjean confesses, gesturing to the candlesticks with his queen before he replaces her on the board. Javert’s eyes go wide before they narrow, but Valjean shakes his head, raising a hand to forestall his comments.

“I ran in the night but was captured by morning,” Valjean continues. “I was dragged back to the church with all I had taken. I thought I was going to die,” he admits quietly. “It would have been well within his power to return me to prison, and I would not have left after that, I think. Hate preserved me for nineteen years, but whatever was left of my soul was wearing thin. I doubt I would have lived another winter in Toulon, had I returned.”

“Obviously you did not,” Javert reminds him, and takes another pawn. “Something must have happened to prevent you from going back.”

“The bishop made a gift of his silver,” Valjean tells Javert, and lets the wonder that has not faded after all these years show in his voice. “I robbed him and he forgave me. He said he bought my soul for God with that silver,” Valjean continues, incredulous, “he called me his _brother—_ “ Valjean cannot finish the sentence.

After a heavy pause, he takes Javert’s queen. Javert curses and Valjean laughs, the moment of melancholy somewhat dispelled.

“I had always wondered how it was you came by your fortune in Montreuil,” Javert mutters, moving his bishop to corner a knight.

“Lawfully!” Valjean protests, bringing his knight back to safety. “I made my initial investments with the profits I could gain from the silver, but the jet industry—“ Valjean shakes his head, cutting off that line of thinking. “That is besides the point.”

Contemplating the board, Valjean collects himself, and one of Javert’s bishops. “In Digne, I found that everything I knew was gone,” he says softly, and does not meet Javert’s gaze, letting it rest heavily on his shoulders. “My sister and her family were lost. It was the first time, I think, that I truly comprehended how far I had fallen. Pride sustained me in prison, but it would give me nothing in the wider world. The worldview I had labored under for nineteen years amounted to nothing; mercy,” he says, “is a terrible thing.”

For his part, Javert is silent, and between them the game lies mostly forgotten. His eyes have not left Valjean, but his gaze is not so piercing as it could be, more a reminder of his presence than an inquisition.

“What will you do, as you heal?” Valjean asks eventually, the game having progressed by several moves.

“I cannot return to police work, obviously,” Javert says. “I know no real trades, either, and my injuries most likely will disqualify me from hard labor for the rest of my life. I have walked with a cane for years, but I suspect that once I leave this bed, I will need it even to move about the room.”

Valjean wishes he could contradict this frank assessment, but the doctor had been clear about the extent of Javert’s injuries. While his spine had not quite broken fully, the damage it was undeniable, and in any case Javert was well within his middle age. What he may have previously been able to spring back form as a younger man is now a more serious wound.

“I had never envisioned a life outside that service,” Javert muses, “now that I no longer wear a uniform I find myself strangely lost.”

“Yes, but—“ Valjean struggles with the words. “Surely you have an apartment?”

“Not that I can afford to rent without my pay,” Javert says frankly, frowning at the board before moving a pawn.

“You could stay with me,” Valjean blurts. “That is,” he hurries to say, cursing his tongue, “now that Cosette is to be married, the house on rue Plumet will be too large for me to live in alone—“

Javert raises an eyebrow at him, and Valjean ducks his head, mortified.

“It is not as if I can move about well by myself,” Javert says eventually, putting Valjean out of his babbling misery. “We are stuck together, I think,” he remarks ruefully, and steals one of Valjean’s pawns with his bishop.

Valjean laughs, and with a knight captures Javert’s exposed bishop. “You are stuck with me,” he agrees. “Who else would beat you at chess?”

“You have not won yet,” Javert frowns, castling.

“I have won before,” Valjean shrugs, and moves his bishop into position across from Javert’s black king. “Checkmate,” he says pleasantly, and when Javert leans across the board to kiss him, the rosary knocks both pieces over, letting them ring along the board.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Note also that the series is not complete; there will be at least one more work in this series. Also how the hell did I not put Fix-It in the tags before now, this is complete and utter self-indulgent ridiculousness.

**Author's Note:**

> As always, the title, chapter titles and opening lines are all _Princess Bride_ quotes.


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